Lincecum was superb when he needed to be

The Giants played your favorite card game Wednesday night: Find the ace.

Is Matt Cain the scariest, most dominating pitcher of the Giants' dazzling starting five right now? How about Jonathan Sanchez, who leads the major leagues in lowest opponent batting average, .205, and who pitched the clutch game of his young career Tuesday night?

Or is it Tim (Don't Forget About Me) Lincecum, who climbed out of a sickbed to kill the Diamondbacks on Wednesday, turning in one of his most memorable performances in a 3-1 win, possibly his final start of the regular season?

This much is for sure: For a pitcher who was washed up one month ago, Lincecum has made a heck of a comeback, going 5-1 in September, with 52 strikeouts in six starts.

"I think you can look at certain months where I obviously struggled," Lincecum said. "The biggest month for me was bouncing back here, when the team needed it most."

Wednesday he performed sick, after reporting for work with something resembling a chest cold. But he pitched seven strong, struck out 11, gave up six hits and one run.

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Lincecum was superb when he needed to be

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"He was coughing pretty good" in the dugout during the game, said manager Bruce Bochy, and apparently that's better than coughing pretty bad.

Even in a weakened state, nobody rocks the house at Third and King quite like Lincecum. Seventh inning, 3-1 Giants' lead, two outs and Diamondbacks cleanup man Chris Young at bat, Bochy trudged to the mound to pat Timmy on the back and wish him well. The fans rose to their feet and cheered.

Lincecum ran the count to 1-2 with his fastest pitch of the night, a 93-mph fastball, and the fans rose again. He froze Young with an 85-mph changeup for his final whiff.

The game seemed like a nail-biter, but Lincecum actually won it with his second pitch of the evening, a gopher ball to Diamondbacks' leadoff man Stephen Drew.

According to the Schulman Corollary - devised by Henry Schulman, the Sporting Green's Giants reporter - if the visiting team's leadoff man opens the game with a home run, his team will lose.

(The Schulman Corollary has a Rickey Henderson Exception, but Rickey, when he played for the A's, was backed by several suspiciously aided clouters.)

Lincecum didn't recover immediately. He walked two batters in that first inning with one out, but got his first strikeout at the expense of the dangerous Adam LaRoche.

Lincecum didn't have a 1-2-3 inning all night, but he did mow some folks down - those 11 whiffs.

And he dominated the D'backs in a somewhat unconventional manner. This was Junktime Timmy Jim. He wasn't blowing batters away, he was foolin' 'em out of their socks. Most of his strikeouts were on off-speed pitches.

Lincecum's fastball registered no higher than 92 for the first six innings, and the fastball didn't have much hop, so he mixed in a whole lot of off-speed stuff.

His fastest pitch of the night was 93 mph, in the seventh, and that's a good sign. When Lincecum was struggling through August, his worst month as a big-leaguer, he would typically throw 94 or so early in the game, and his speed would decrease as the innings wore on, until he was in the high 80s.

His more recent trend is to maintain his top speed throughout the game, which could be an indication that his revised training regimen between starts is paying off.

Lincecum was a mystery in August, and he's a different mystery now. Whatever drove him into such a funk (0-5, 7.82 ERA) that month has been driven away. All the emotional and physical demons fled the minute the calendar turned.

Maybe Lincecum simply responded to the challenge of his fellow starters, who, with one game left in the month, have turned in the best September for a starting staff ever, or damn close to it.

And nobody was more solid in September than Lincecum, whose only loss was 2-1 to Milwaukee.

"I don't want to get too ahead of myself and prepare too much," he said. "Now I'm looking to be a good cheerleader. If they need me to lay down a bunt, I'll do my best to lay down a bunt. It's going to be a fun ride seeing where we end up."

Closing strong

After a horrendous August, Tim Lincecum returned to Cy Young form in September: